The documentary, which explores how trauma, nationalism and militarisation have shaped Israeli society after October 7, 2023 and during the genocide in Gaza, arrives as old political certainties around Israel are fracturing, increasingly among Jewish and Israeli intellectuals, artists, rabbis and historians themselves. In it, historians, experts and everyday Israelis are interviewed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe media has not reported this,\u201d the film\u2019s director Gillian Mosely told Al Jazeera from her London home, days before the screening. \u201cBritish Jews are being treated as a monolith, which I think is fuelling anti-Semitism.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to polling from the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, which researches the state of contemporary Jewish life in the UK and across Europe,\u00a0 British Jewish opinion is divided over the war in Gaza and the direction of Israeli politics.<\/p>\n
Forty percent of British Jews said Israel\u2019s conduct in the Strip had weakened their attachment to the country, while more than a third said they no longer identified as Zionists. Only 12 percent expressed approval of Benjamin Netanyahu.<\/p>\n
These shifts are visible across publishing and religious life. New books, including Israel: What Went Wrong? by Omer Bartov, a former Israeli army officer and professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University, and Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund by American writer Molly Crabapple, revisit questions of Zionism, diaspora and Jewish identity in the wake of Gaza.<\/p>\n
Britain\u2019s Movement for Progressive Judaism, which represents about a third of UK synagogues, recently published a book arguing that criticism of the Israeli government is \u201ca Jewish obligation\u201d. Its co-leaders, Rabbi Charley Baginsky and Rabbi Josh Levy, warned that Israel\u2019s political direction risks becoming \u201cincompatible with Jewish values\u201d.<\/p>\n
![\"Screenshot](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Screenshot-2026-04-13-at-11.04.08-1778854726.png\")
Screenshot from Planet Israel, featuring historian Avi Shlaim discussing Israel and shifting public perceptions [Planet Israel]<\/p>\n
Historian Avi Shlaim, who is featured in Planet Israel, spoke of a rupture between Israel and Jewish communities around the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cA growing number of Jews, not only intellectuals, are challenging the Israeli narrative because Israel\u2019s conduct in Gaza has made it a pariah and a war criminal state,\u201d Shlaim, who is Israeli, told Al Jazeera. \u201cThe argument of self-defence no longer serves as a cover for Israeli atrocities and indeed genocide.<\/p>\n
\u201cIsraeli brutality in the war in Gaza, the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, and the destruction of southern Lebanon have created a crisis between Israel and world Jewry. More and more Jewish groups around the world have come out openly against Israel. They all say: \u2018Not in our name\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Things have just gone from bad to worse\u2019<\/p>\n
Mosely, a British American Jewish filmmaker who used to believe in Zionism, says her documentary is about how a people shaped by historical persecution can become attached to a permanent narrative of victimhood, and what happens when that victimhood becomes politically weaponised.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlso, being Jewish, I understand that Jews are raised to feel they\u2019re victims,\u201d Mosely said. \u201cI mean, we were victims [of the Holocaust]. It\u2019s just part of what happened, which is something that I\u2019ve personally long railed against, because I don\u2019t think that\u2019s a way to exist.\u201d<\/p>\n
Raised in a family steeped in Sephardic Jewish history stretching back centuries across Spain, the Netherlands, the UK and the United States, her lineage includes rabbis, chief rabbis and Jewish communal leaders. She grew up surrounded by stories of exile, persecution and migration \u2013 but also a pro-Israel worldview.<\/p>\n
![\"Gillian](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Screenshot-2026-04-13-at-11.06.33-1778855131.png\")
Gillian interviews Rabbi Avi Dabush during a visit to his home in southern Israel [Planet Israel]<\/p>\n
Her understanding of Israel and Palestine shifted after forming a bond with a Palestinian friend at university.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy the time I heard of the Nakba, I was already down the road,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Learning about Palestinian history unsettled the assumptions she had inherited, an internal reckoning that would eventually shape her body of work.<\/p>\n
Before Planet Israel, Mosely produced and directed The Tinderbox (2022), exploring Israeli violations in Palestine, and later directed From the Nakba to Camp David (2026) for the Britain Palestine Project, tracing the conflict from the displacement of Palestinians in 1948 through the decades that followed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I made The Tinderbox, I really thought that was all I had to say on the subject,\u201d Mosely said. \u201cBut things have just gone from bad to worse. I can\u2019t believe how poorly served we\u2019ve been by mainstream media in terms of context and deeper understanding. That really shocked me after October 7.\u201d<\/p>\n
At first, \u201ca red mist of fear and hatred had descended over most Israelis,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s \u2026 the feeling that \u2018we need to kill them all,\u2019\u201d she said, quoting an Israeli interviewed in her film. She argued that Israeli institutions have \u201cwhitewashed\u201d the country\u2019s formative history, leaving many Israelis disconnected from Palestinian claims to land, identity and statehood.<\/p>\n
The documentary also explores how \u201cGreater Israel<\/a>\u201d ideas have entered mainstream political discourse. Interviewees describe education systems that minimise or erase the Green Line separating Israel from the occupied Palestinian territory.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat was quite shocking to me were the academic studies showing the level to which [the ideology] had infiltrated the education, military and media systems in Israel,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd then the religion, I hadn\u2019t expected to be quite as affronted by what\u2019s happened to the religion.\u201d<\/p>\n Judaism has been politicised, she said.<\/p>\n She contrasted a long ethical and diasporic Jewish tradition centred on justice and the protection of strangers with a hardline nationalism visible in Israeli politics.<\/p>\n \u201cTo me, watching what looks like bloodlust by the likes of (Israel\u2019s National Security Minister) Ben-Gvir<\/a> and (Finance Minister Bezalel) Smotrich<\/a>, particularly, feels like it is mocking my ancestors who kept Judaism safe for over 1,200 years,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Shlaim agreed.<\/p>\n \u201cThe core values of Judaism are truth, justice, and peace,\u201d he said. \u201cThe present Israeli government is the antithesis of these core Jewish values.\u201d<\/p>\n He said Gaza has \u201cgenerated a shift\u201d in how people regard Israel, \u201cfor its brutality and sadism\u201d.<\/p>\n But the way the Nakba is viewed has not changed \u201cfundamentally\u201d, he added. \u201cOrdinary people\u2019s perceptions have changed more about the present than about the past.\u201d<\/p>\n Inside the cinema hall, there are many unnerving noises. A distorted electronic hum, like a radio struggling to find a signal, drones, pulses during scenes of bombardment and testimony. On screen, fractured visuals and AI-assisted animation interrupt the flow of interviews.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s subliminal,\u201d Mosely said of the film\u2019s sound design. \u201cThis is not a war game.\u201d<\/p>\n Holocaust survivor Stephen Kapos, 88, who was in the audience, said the unflinching portrayal of destruction felt necessary.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can\u2019t have enough illustrations of what is going on and the impact it has on the people and children,\u201d he told Al Jazeera. \u201cIt\u2019s important to keep seeing the totality of the devastation so we don\u2019t forget that it\u2019s not over. Palestinians are living in impossible conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n Kapos was seven during the Holocaust.<\/p>\n \u201cI still remember everything that happened to my friends. That in no way excuses or explains \u2013 let alone actively perpetrating \u2013 what\u2019s going on in Gaza.\u201d<\/p>\n While Planet Israel focuses on Israeli psychology and Jewish trauma, the film also returns to the material consequences of those narratives for Palestinians: Occupation, displacement, siege and military violence.<\/p>\n But Mosely is careful not to position herself as speaking for Palestinians.<\/p>\n \u201cI made a point of staying away from Palestinian trauma because I\u2019m not Palestinian,\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t feel I\u2019m the person to talk about it. It\u2019s very obvious that trauma is colossal.\u201d<\/p>\n As audience members slowly filter out into the London night after the screening, some stay in the foyer to debate history as others discuss propaganda, trauma, nationalism and media failures. One viewer quietly wonders whether films like this can still matter while bombs continue to fall.<\/p>\n Mosely hopes they can.<\/p>\n \u201cPoliticians are very slow to turn their back on what has been consensus public opinion,\u201d she said. \u201cBut the Gaza war has dramatically changed that consensus, both here and in America. The politicians haven\u2019t caught up with it yet.\u201d<\/p>\n Then she pauses.<\/p>\n \u201cIs this the world we want to live in?\u201d she asks. \u201cAnd if it isn\u2019t, what are we going to do about it?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"London, United Kingdom \u2013\u00a0The lights come up slowly inside a cinema in London\u2019s buzzy Soho district, but nobody…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115339,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[39674,17050,54,647,7889,1722,37,497,49,498,691],"class_list":["post-115338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-al-nakba","tag-cinema","tag-europe","tag-features","tag-genocide","tag-human-rights","tag-israel","tag-israel-palestine-conflict","tag-middle-east","tag-palestine","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116579142595814055","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115338\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Stephen](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Stephen-1778854971.jpg\")
Stephen Kapos and Gillian Mosely at the London screening of Planet Israel [Beardvoyage]<\/p>\n